St. Paul hopes to cash in on Super Bowl with palace-sized plans

A fireworks display puts the final touches on the lighting ceremony for the 1992 Ice Palace during opening night on Harriet Island in St. Paul Wednesday, Jan. 22, 1992. Media from around the world, drawn here by the upcoming Super Bowl in Minneapolis, were on hand. Standing 166 feet high, the palace is nearly three times bigger and 40 feet taller than St. Paul's last palace, built for the Winter Carnival's centennial in 1986. (Pioneer Press: Valicia Boudry)
***

So Minneapolis is getting Super Bowl LII in 2018. What could St. Paul possibly get out of that deal?

Plenty, if you ask tourism planners and business advocates.

Rather than wring their hands that so much national attention will be focused westward across the Mississippi River, St. Paul officials are talking about readying the city's hotel rooms, touting the new light-rail link between the two cities and pondering the possibility of building a massive ice palace.

From bar parties and limo rentals to private jets landing at Holman Field, St. Paul shops, restaurants and charities could benefit. So, too, could likely event hosts such as the Xcel Energy Center and the Ordway.

Marilyn Carlson Nelson, former chair and chief executive of Carlson Cos. and a co-chair of the Super Bowl bid committee, said she and the others played up St. Paul and the Winter Carnival as part of their pitch to NFL owners.

"You can imagine the visual with that castle," she said. "I mean, no one else has anything like that."

Michael Langley, CEO of Greater MSP, the Minneapolis St. Paul Regional Economic Development Partnership, who served on the Super Bowl bid committee, added: "I think there's going to be a lot of activity in St. Paul as a result of the Super Bowl."

While nothing has been finalized, Langley said the Super Bowl's "Media Day" celebration -- featuring local and national media interviews with players -- could very well land at the Xcel Energy Center.

Advertisement

And he's envisioning additional events at the Union Depot and Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in downtown St. Paul.

Matt Kramer, president of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, said the benefits of having a Super Bowl across the river are not automatic. To reap dividends, St. Paul businesses will have to think strategically.

"If you take it for granted, what we will get are hotel stays, and that's not good enough," Kramer said.

He hopes to see coordination between downtown museums, Winter Carnival events and Red Bull Crashed Ice, if it's held in St. Paul at the same time, to capture visitors.

"We have to be very deliberate about it," Kramer said. "We can't just hope for the best. We have to actually manage this."

By that time, stronger transit links such as the new Green Line and proposed bus rapid-transit lines will better link the two cities.

"We're only eight miles away between the two downtowns," said Lenny Russo, owner of Heartland Restaurant in Lowertown. "And in 2018, I expect there will be more going on. With light rail connecting St. Paul to Minneapolis directly, I'd expect we'd see plenty of business here, from lodging to retail."

With an eye on both the Super Bowl and the city's new regional ballpark, Cheri Kappas, co-owner of the Gopher Bar in downtown St. Paul, is thinking of investing in a shuttle van to transport customers from hotels to her door.

"I'm sure there's going to be quite a few bars shuttling people over, absolutely," Kappas said. "We're looking into buying one, because we're going to have the (St. Paul) Saints stadium down here soon."

WINTER WONDERLAND

Now, about that ice palace: No decisions have been made, but everybody's talking.

"We're starting the discussion, obviously, and have a lot of steps to go through to the point of having an ice palace in 2018," said Rosanne Bump, president and CEO of the St. Paul Festival and Heritage Foundation, which manages the St. Paul Winter Carnival.

Bump said the 2018 carnival runs from Jan. 25 through Feb. 4 -- and ends on the same day as Super Bowl LII.

Organizers know from experience to inject a level of caution in their planning. St. Paul hosted a big, budget-busting ice palace in 1992, the only other time the Super Bowl has landed in the Twin Cities, and also built a smaller ice palace in 2004 when the NHL All-Star Game came to town.

When Super Bowl XXVI brought the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in 1992, Winter Carnival organizers went all-out to build the world's tallest ice palace.

Assembled from 20,000 blocks of clear ice pulled from Green Lake, the towering structure rose 166 feet off the ground and cost $2.5 million. The castle, on top of security measures, transportation and other Winter Carnival attractions, left the organization straddling nearly $1 million in debt that year, the biggest deficit in more than a century of Winter Carnivals.

Logistics, marketing and sponsorships would all have to come together to keep history from repeating itself. "That's why we want to make sure we have a lot of support and interest from all the partners -- the city, the business community and the general community," Bump said. "We'll just need a broad base of support. I think everybody's excited about it."

"Landing the Super Bowl is a catalyst for a lot of things, (an) ice palace being the biggest thing St. Paul could do to attract Super Bowl visitors to the capital city," said Adam Johnson, vice president of marketing at Visit St. Paul, the city's convention and visitors bureau. "We will likely start having meetings very soon on the ice palace and will likely create a steering committee to lead the initiative."

LASTING IMPACT

Could the Super Bowl also jump-start plans for any new "bricks and mortar" developments in St. Paul, such as new hotels, renovations to existing hotel rooms or new downtown restaurants?

"It is too soon to say if the Super Bowl will expedite any of those projects, but it certainly shows a developer the magnitude of the events that the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is able to attract," Johnson said.

Peter Zellmer, director of sales and marketing for the St. Paul Hotel, said the hospitality industry thinks of major cities such as Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and New York as "Tier 1" cities because they're loaded with infrastructure, activities and amenities to support conventions and special events.

New Orleans would probably register as a Tier 2 city, and Milwaukee would be considered Tier 4.

"Minneapolis-St. Paul, some people would consider that Tier 3," Zellmer said, but the Twin Cities are fighting hard to climb up a rank. Events such as Red Bull Crashed Ice and the Republican National Convention, which was held in St. Paul in 2008, help, but a Super Bowl is even bigger.

"It's just another one of those steppingstones for exposure," Zellmer said. "All of this is building up our portfolio, our infrastructure, to say, 'We can handle this stuff.' People are going to look at us more."

Hotels -- which serve as base camps for teams, visitors and the media -- are a big part of the equation. By 2018, a mall expansion and hotel project at the Mall of America in Bloomington will be complete, as will the remodels underway at the downtown St. Paul Crowne Plaza and DoubleTree hotels.

CHARITIES BENEFIT

National and international athletic competitions such as the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the World Cup tend to shower select charities with funding in order to leave a visible legacy.

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which will be played in Minneapolis on July 15, is funding $8 million in charitable projects in the Twin Cities, including improvements to the El Rio Vista ball fields near Neighborhood House on St. Paul's West Side and the Trout Brook Sanctuary, west of Interstate 35E off Cayuga Avenue.

"There's a huge legacy element of the Super Bowl, where the NFL partners with the host community to give back," said Langley, of Greater MSP.

Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the National Football League, pointed to a long series of community activities associated with the most recent Super Bowl, which was held in New Jersey in January.

Events included coat drives, Make-A-Wish Foundation visits with players, home building with Habitat for Humanity, military outreach for wounded veterans and a gospel concert. Through the NFL's "One World Super Huddle," young New York and New Jersey pen pals from different ethnic and racial backgrounds met for the first time in person at Liberty State Park.

In addition, the NFL and a host committee distributed $2 million in charitable grants between them, with much of the money going to refurbish sites damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Even the Children's Museum of Manhattan hosted a Super Bowl-themed exhibit called "You Make the Call: Learn to be an NFL Official."

In 1992, the first and last time the Super Bowl landed in Minneapolis, local organizers launched the "Taste of the NFL," an exhibition of local chefs and restaurants that raises money for charity. The concept has been replicated during Super Bowls ever since.

"The Taste of the NFL was invented here, and it's provided millions and millions of dollars in charitable giving to food shelves," Langley said.

The bid committee has proposed a possible new legacy program in partnership with the Mayo Clinic, with a focus on youth health and nutrition.

If the Twin Cities can pull off a successful Super Bowl, St. Paul boosters say they'll be able to convince conventions large and small that they're ready to accommodate them.

Russo, of Heartland Restaurant, is part of a group of Twin Cities business owners and advocates looking beyond Super Bowl LII to 2023, when they're hoping to land a World's Fair. The bids are due next year, and the celebration could span months of festivities for millions of visitors from around the world.

"The World's Fair would be like having a Super Bowl every day for three or four months," Russo said. "We need to speak up and continue to make enough noise and excitement about our city so we can continue to grow."

Doug Belden contributed to this report. Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.